


After the Fire

by Ducks



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Darkfic, F/M, Future Fic, absent third
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-07
Updated: 2009-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:24:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ducks/pseuds/Ducks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it love or suicide?</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted Mar. 13th, 2004

His cool hands slip down her back as he pulls her in, and Faith reminds herself... this isn't about love...

Exactly.

Theirs is a relationship born of need. Of warmth, caring and familiarity... sort of. There's no place for flowers or poetry, soft words or promises of forever that always turn out to be lies. Every heart dies in the end, even when the shell goes on walking, talking, fighting, fucking.

It just is, they just are, because they were who they were, they had survived the End of All Things, and there was no one else left who they cared about... who cared about them... who remembered what came Before.

They were all that remained. So they stayed.

He cups her rear in his big hands, crushes her crotch against his growing erection with a deep moan as he claims her mouth. Bruising kisses, she loses her breath and plunges her tongue deep in the soothing cool he offers.

This is about need. How she felt for him all those years ago... doesn't matter. She's not the same, and neither is he. They fall to the bed together, the mattress creaks and he grunts as she lands hard on top of him, straddles him, grinds into him.

"Yessss," he hisses. Eyes roll back, close, unnecessary breath shortens, comes faster.

"You want me to fuck you, baby?" she growls in his ear, nips the fleshy edge, feels his hard cock pulse even through the layers of leather separating them.

His fingers dig into her hips. "Yeah, baby. Fuck me."

He never opens his eyes. She's stopped wondering if he fantasizes about Buffy or Darla or Cordy or Spike or Wesley or whothefuckever. She doesn't care anymore.

She can't remember if she ever really did.

It's not about love. It's not even about lust. They don't even call each other by name. Just baby, or bitch, or lover. Once he called her a fucking whore, and she came so hard she thought for sure her guts would come flying out of her to splatter all over the filthy walls of their shithole apartment.

All that blood everywhere, just like...

She never bothered trying to figure out what the fuck that meant, either. Instead she yanks and pulls, he tears and tugs, and in a minute what little they are wearing is peeled off and flung away, into the dust on the floor, and all that's left is flesh.

Faith cries out to feel him, cool and smooth against her hot and jagged. His blunt teeth clamp down on one turgid nipple, and she cries out, digs her nails into his scalp. Need. Where she's empty, he fills her. Where she's broken, he mends.

At least for right now. He thrusts up, she rides down, and he stretches her to the breaking point like they've never done this a million times before, and her body hasn't reformed itself to fit his big cock perfectly.

"FUCK!" she screams at the agonyecstacy, and she loves it. She can still feel. She can. She feels him as he impales her. Shreds her. Sunders and tears and reams and...

"You have to take care of him, Faith. Promise me."  
"Sh, B. You're gonna be fine. We'll both take care of him."  
"Promise me! Please. I can't go unless I know..."

"Faith," he gasps. She looks down, and he's looking up at her.

Can he read her mind or something, now? Did he hear Buffy's deathbed words, the broken vow? The way it rattles around in her head, rips through her dreams, echoes in the canyon of her thoughts?

Haunts her like a fucking ghost even when he's so deep inside her, he should be pushing everything else the fuck out?

Take care of him. Take care of him.

She doesn't take care of him. She fucks him. She fights beside him. She watches TV with him. Sometimes she runs to the butcher for him. That's it. He can't be fixed either, any more than she can. Buffy would be so pissed if she knew.

In six years, has he ever said her name while they were screwing? She's so surprised to hear it, she forgets to ride. His hands, tight on her hips, remind her. He uses that ungodly vampire strength to pull her up, slam her down, and the moment's gone before she's even sure it was there.

She doesn't say his name back.

"BUFFY? BUFFY!!! OH GOD!"  
"It's too late. She's gone, Angel. I was too late. I'm sorry. I had to..."

Sometimes when they fuck, she can still smell the blood. From her mouth, her eyes, her ears, under her fingernails, from every fucking orifice that could leak... and a few just-made, like the big knife crater Faith had dug in her gut.

He bows up, wraps his arms around her, nips on her collarbone.

"Bite me, bitch," she snarls. Kink is better than sentiment, than remembering. She can lose consciousness and forget this whole damn decade for a little while, and maybe help him do the same. Force the fucking memories out of them both. "Suck me."

He snarls, clamps a hand on the back of her neck, pulls her neck taught and down. He used to hesitate. He used to refuse. He used to pretend he couldn't. Didn't want to. She knew better even when he didn't, and it didn't take too damn long to teach him.

Cock and fangs, baby. Cock and fangs. Better than heroin, she figures, and just as sure to kill her in the end.

He slams up, slides in, her life plunges out into his mouth, over his tongue, and he makes these hungry, desperate gulping sounds like he's been starving for a thousand years...

"What does it taste like?"  
"Blood."  
"Smart ass. What does it taste like?"  
"Pennies soaked in motor oil. With a cup of sugar."  
"Yummy."  
"It's better than it sounds."

He told her Slayerblood was like liquid Heaven. Like jet fuel. Like...

Heroin. Just a Hell of a lot more likely to kill him in the end.

"FUCK!" she screams, but the sound is only inside now. He's drinking and fucking her sohardsofast, she's dizzy and sick, and by the time the orgasm hits, she can't even tense anymore. She whimpers and goes limp in his arms. Dead from bliss.

This is when he usually stops. But every now and then, like now, he takes that one gulp... or two... too many, and the tiny sliver of awareness still left in her is torn between fighting and wondering if this is it... if this time, it's finally over, and he's decided to show her some damn mercy at last. He comes hard with a pained whine against her bleeding throat, pounding in cold, drawing out hot...

She'd rather go like this, with him, than the way the others went. Eaten by dragons. Burned in lava. Turned to stone. Evaporated. Suffocated. Eviscerated. Poisoned. Stabbed to death.

"Oh, God! Faith! It hurts!"  
"B, what can I do? What can I do?"  
"Please! Help me! Make it stop. Please!"  
"No...I can't, Buffy. Please don't ask me to!"  
"I can't take it, Faith! GOD IT HURTS SO MUCH! PLEASE!"

He stops. He always stops. Bitter and broken or not, he still has a soul. He still cares about her, and she's all he has left, too. He withdraws above and below, leaving her empty and cold and sticky again, licks the wound closed, lies down and gathers her in his arms like they're going to cuddle.

Like there's anything else left to feel.

"It's too late, Angel. She's gone. I'm sorry! She made me..."  
"NO!"

He buries his face in her hair with a sigh, arms encircling like a marble cage warmed with her blood, and she slips away, wondering...

Fucked and twisted and suicidal as it may be, is it maybe a little about love?

~

Fin


End file.
